How To Pick a Password

March 4, 2015

Passwords. They’ve become an essential part of our day-to-day lives. We need them to get into everything online and forgetting them can be a real pain. But not as much of a pain as having someone guess yours and hack into your account. This leads to us having to remember a complex stream of random letters, numbers and symbols. But is there another way?

Statistical analysis has shown that these random, difficult-to-remember passwords are actually not as secure as we’d hope. An average password with a selection of different number and symbol substitutions can be guessed in 3 days (assuming that the software that’s trying to hack your password is making 1000 guesses per second).

However, if your password is made from a random selection of four words (all lowercase letters and no spaces, symbols or numbers) then the same hacking software would take 500 years to guess your password. Having a password made up of four common words also makes it a lot easier to remember, rather trying to remember which ‘s’ you swapped for a ‘5’.

Check this out:

Image credit: https://xkcd.com/936/ – how to create a good password!

While we’re on the subject of passwords, it’s also worth mentioning that you shouldn’t use the same password for everything. Spare a thought for Aaron Barr, CEO of American cyber-security experts HBGary. He used the same password across the board so when hacktivist group LulzSec obtained the password to his work computer in 2011 (he was tricked into giving it to one of their members over the phone) it didn’t take them long to reek havoc with his Twitter. Let that be a warning to us all.

We work hard to make sure that our security, and the security of our clients’ websites, is maintained to the highest possible standards. If you’re worried about your online security, or need a secure new site then don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

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